Page 330 of Chaos has a Name
They’d play board games in her bed as she was so sick she couldn’t walk.
She’d make him dinner, even if it was simple because that was all she could muster.
Catherine had been theONLYone who never let him down as a child. So, of course, she’d be the one that the universe took from him.
Instead, leaving him with a meddling old man who let CPS take him, and a drunken father who didn’t care forANYof his children.
Minus the few years he’d raised TJ.
“Even on her deathbed, I couldn’t deal with it,” Wyler admitted. “I told her what she wanted to hear, and then, I escaped. I had to stare into her face, and know that death was taking the wrong parent.”
Ethan was well aware.
His life would have been incredibly different had Catherine lived. He wouldn’t be the cold, cruel bastard he’d learned to be in order to survive.
All he knew was that he was lucky.
He found his tribe, and they loved him for him.
Wyler kept going.
“Then, there was the day I got the call. Your mother was gone for quite a few years at that point. Timothy called me, he told me that CPS came for you, and that I needed to go get you. They needed the birth certificate, and proof that I was able to care for you.”
He said nothing.
Even as a fifty-year-old man, this broke something in him. How could it not?
“When I pulled out the box of things I’d gotten from your mother’s home after her death, I began digging through itfrantically to find your birth certificate. That’s when I found a letter she’d written to me.”
Ethan didn’t know where this was going.
Wyler got up, and he went to one of the cabinets in the pantry. Out of it, he pulled a shoebox that had been tucked up on the highest shelf behind some crackers.
When he brought it back, he sat down and took the lid off of it.
“Here is the letter your mother left me,” he said. “My beloved Catherine, the only woman who was my other half in all of my years of life, left me this last piece of her. Here is what she said to me.”
Ethan took it, and he opened it up. The letter was clearly read many, many times. It was worn, and some of the ink was smeared by water.
Like someone had cried over it.
When he saw the handwriting, it was a punch to his chest.
He’d know it anywhere.
Why?
His very unique penmanship was incredibly similar. He’d not only gotten his mother’s eye color, but he’d also gotten her handwriting.
As he began reading, he felt like he could feel her there with him. Like she was in the kitchen, watching. Only, Ethan wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.
He was ready to break.
‘My one true love,
My time has obviously come if you’re reading this letter. I hope my passing wasn’t brutal, and that I did it alone. The last thing I would want is for Ethanto see me leave this world, and to carry that on his shoulders.
He is the best child a parent could ask for, and I only wish that I had more time with him. There’s so much more he needs to learn before he can be out in the world on his own. He needs someone to soften this hurt that he’s feeling, and protect him from that anger that will pull him down and hurt him more.
